Review: Samsung Galaxy S4

When I first opened the box of the Samsung Galaxy S4 review unit loaned to me by AT&T, I have to admit I was pretty disappointed. While I knew the company’s newest flagship smartphone didn’t overhaul the design of its predecessor, the Galaxy S3, I was surprised at just how little had changed at first glance.

The S4 still looks like an overgrown Apple iPhone 3G to me (and apparently to Apple’s lawyers as well, since they’re trying to have the S4 added to their latest patent lawsuit against Samsung), and it’s still largely made of plastic. But those impressions change significantly when you pick it up and turn it on.

While the S3 felt cheap and insubstantial, the S4 is thinner and denser, and thus more solid. Yeah, there’s still that slick plastic back, which is alarmingly thin when you remove it. But overall, the build quality is a noticeably improved, even if the materials used are the same.

I say this at the outset because the S4’s plastic design has taken a lot of knocks from other reviewers, as well as Android users who are looking for their next smartphone. Given that the other top choice among high-end Android devices is HTC’s beautiful, unibody, aluminum-based One, the S4 is getting an unfair rap. The hardware on the S4 isn’t as nice as the HTC One, but Samsung hasn’t simply replicated the cheap-feeling S3 here. It’s an incremental change, but it makes a difference.

And that largely sums up the Galaxy S4. Those looking for a radically different approach to a smartphone will need to look elsewhere (probably at the One). But as Apple did with the iPhone 5, Samsung has tweaked, tightened and evolved its flagship smartphone. As a result, it’s the most advanced device of its type at the moment.

Here are the specs:

• The S4 has a 5-inch, Super AMOLED display with a 1,920-by-1080 resolution. That results in a 441-pixel-per-inch density. The S3 by comparison has a 1,280-by-720 resolution and a 306-ppi pixel density. And yes, the S4’s display is the same resolution as most HDTVs.

• The chassis is slightly narrower and slightly thinner than the S3, at 5.38 by 2.75 by .031 inches. The S4 accommodates its larger screen by narrowing the bezel area. It weighs just under 4.6 ounces.

• Its rear camera has 13 megapixels with a 4X optical digital zoom, while the front has 2 MP. The cameras both can capture full 1080p HD video. Software enables the camera to do all kinds of interesting things. More on that in a moment.

• In the U.S., the processor is a quad-core, 1.9-GHz Snapdragon 600. It has 2 gigabytes of RAM and the model I tried has 16 GB of storage. However, as I wrote last week, you only get access to about 9 GB of that in the AT&T model, thanks to all the software from Samsung and the carrier. A version with 32 GB of storage is also available. Data storage can be increased using a microSD memory card, but you can’t store apps on it.

• The S4 for AT&T works on the carrier’s HSPA+ and LTE bands. It also has Bluetooth, Wi-Fi (802.11n, supporting the 2.4-and 5-GHz bands).

• As with all modern smartphones, the S4 has an accelerometer, a GPS, a proximity sensor, gyroscope, a compass and the ability to check the ambient light in the room. But it also can sense temperature and humidity. The S4 also can detect what your eyes are doing, and can sense gestures near, but not necessarily on, the screen.

• The S4 comes with a 2,600-mAh replaceable battery.

• It ships with Android 4.2.2, a variant of Jelly Bean.

The Galaxy S4’s screen is easily the best I’ve seen on any smartphone. It’s bright, with rich colors, and I didn’t have issues seeing it in bright sunlight.

The camera is the easily the standout feature on this smartphone. While I think most folks will just point and shoot with the S4’s excellent camera, the phone is just bristling with software that lets you do all kinds of interesting things. Many of the features are also found in Samsung’s Galaxy Camera, the Android-based point-and-shoot I reviewed in March.

For example, you can record a bit of sound to go with an image, or capture freeze-frame images from action that can be stitched together. The Best Face feature lets you take multiple photos, then pull into one image a composite with the best facial expressions.

Or, there’s the odd feature that lets you use both front and rear cameras at the same time. You can show yourself admiring what you’re photographing. It takes a little bit of skill to get both cameras lined up just right.

You can change the border on the front camera’s image, make the frame smaller or larger and move it around on the screen. You can also use the two-camera feature for video, which may make more sense.

The rear camera’s 13 megapixels makes this a powerhouse for casual photography. While Samsung’s cameras tend to oversaturate colors, the general result is rich with detail. Here’s a simple shot with the S4’s camera:

And for comparison, here’s the same picture taken with a Galaxy S3.

And yes, the aspect ratios are different on the two cameras.

The camera’s potential complexity is symbolic of Samsung’s approach to the S4. Using software, it’s loaded the smartphone up with an overwhelming slew of features, with apps that track health, work with Samsung’s voice recognition system or allow for almost infinite customization of the interface.

In fact, Samsung even offers a way to hide this complexity. You can turn on something called Easy Mode, which flattens the look and dramatically cuts down on the number of visible apps. Fonts are generally bigger on Samsung’s own apps in this mode, which makes it ideal for older users.

With its quad-core processor, the S4 is as fast as you’d expect it to be. (If you’re a smartphone speed junkie, though, you’ll wish you were living in Europe, where the S4 boasts an eight-core processor!) And here’s a tip: The phone is even faster in Easy Mode.

Battery life is very, very good. With moderate use, I could get two days between charges. Heavier use dropped that to a day and an half, which is still more than acceptable.

This is generally an excellent smartphone, and if you buy into Samsung’s philosophy of more-is-always-better, you’ll love it. If you’re not a fan of bloatware, you may want to wait for Google’s announced, unlocked version of S4 that runs stock Android. When it goes on sale on June 26, it won’t be available with a contract that subsidizes it (it will work on either T-Mobile’s or AT&T’s networks) so you’ll pay almost $600 for the privilege of having a crapware-free Galaxy S4. But for some, it will be more than worth it.

This model is available for $199 with a 2-year contract from AT&T. Similar deals are available from the other major carriers.

If you’re looking for a high-end Android smartphone, it’s really between this and the HTC One. The latter has a much nicer design and, while it does tart up Android in its own way, takes less of an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach to the software. The One’s lack of a memory card slot is an issue, though, and some won’t like its sealed-battery design. In terms of hardware flexibility, the Galaxy S4 comes out the winner.

55 Responses

My contract is coming up in June and I’ve been debating between the S4 and waiting until the end of summer and checking the Note3. Any thoughts? I’m still loving my S2 Skyrocket, so waiting isn’t a horrible thing.

Haven’t read any reviews about the Note 3 but with the S Pen, it will surely be a great device. The S4 is also amazing with its 5-inch screen and just the right size. Found a review at http://www.squidoo.com/s4-galaxy

I know I’m kinda late to this conversation, but he probably experienced lock-ups due to android updates that were not thoroughly checked, like T-Mobile’s updates for Ice Cream Sandwich (4.0.3). I have a Galaxy S2 and I experienced lock-ups on Ice Cream Sandwich frequently. ICS was easily the worst version of android for my phone and I’m so glad to be rid of it. Even the custom ROMS for ICS had a lot of issues (I couldn’t find one that I liked). It nearly drove me to an iphone. Since the update to Jelly Bean, my S2 has been running smooth. I”m currently running a custom Jelly Bean ROM to get free tethering and have no problems with it at all. I’m no longer in a hurry to upgrade.

Still having trouble finding out what each phone does that the other doesn’t (iphone, s4, one) I know its mostly which one you just personally like. But besides the interface I have become used to with apple it just seems like you are not getting your moneys worth anymore with the iphone.

As you stated, it is mostly just a preference difference. Both phones work fine and have strong points.

I migrated away from iPhone when the LTE version of the S2 and iPhone 4 both came out. For some reason Apple didn’t think LTE was important at the time.

iPhones are pretty close to idiot proof in their design, so there is a very small learning curve. iPhone has a very large app market (granted there seem to be 100 different versions of the exact same app).

Androids are a little less intuitive if you’re not tech minded. But, since they are basically mobile PCs, you can use them for much more than iPhones. The removable data card is extremely useful as is the removable battery. Android market place is pretty large (not as large as iTunes though) and has probably 90% of all the big apps you could want. Plus, Android is not as “We know better than you do about what apps you should be allowed to have” as Apple. And if there is some app you’ve heard of that you really want but isn’t officially approved, you can still get it without jailbreaking your phone. I’ve had a few product specific apps that I got directly from the manufacturer that were not available on the app store yet. You simply can not do that with iPhone.

Thanks guys, I guess I will wait a bit more and see if the next iphone to come out is hardware specs close to these two android phones, that will also give me some time to find some friends phones and maybe get some hands on.

Dwight, I received my S4 on Saturday and I really like the size and feel. I upgraded from a Motorola Atrix 4g which is a lot smaller.

I am investigating a possible problem though. I always plug my charger into my phone when I go to bed at night and noticed this morning that my battery was almost dead. I plugged the charger back in and the phone indicated it was charging a 4% battery. This went on for more than an hour and the phone began nagging me with a low battery message. I removed the battery and noticed it was not warm as a charging battery should be. In the last 30 minutes or so I have been charging the phone and now see the battery percentage rising to indicate charging.

I will pay attention to the charging for the next several days but a little charging LED would have been a nice addition. With the phone off or in standby there is nothing to let you know whether it’s charging or not.

The next thing I would like to know is which of the crapware and manufacturer Apps can be safely removed?

Nope it’s just doing something really screwed up. If I connect any other USB cable except the white one that came with it then the charging stops, It will not connect to the PC and I have to remove the battery for the problem to go away. If it keeps this up then I have no use for it regardless of how good it is. I will contact ATT and see what they have to say about this problem.

I have charging cables in both cars, by my bed, in the kitchen and in my office. I don’t wish to have to put their little white cord in my pocket and drag it around the planet. No reason it should not accept another cable!

do you have a jacket on the phone? We found that some cases/jackets/protectors interfere with the plug and only certain ones wouold fit (in our case the OEM was it, like yours). I made the opening in the jacket a bit larger and the problem went away. The problem isn’t the phone or the cable: it’s the jacket.

You’re kidding right? Yes at one time IOS was much superior to Android but that’s simply not the case. In fact, the reverse has occurred and the market is reflecting said change. Nothing wrong with IOS but it’s a boring operating system which really hasn’t improved appreciably in several years.

This is a wider reply on the flash matter for android versions. Flash can be side loaded to all jellybean versions. The easiest way is to purchase xscope pro browser which is my favourite browser after the HTC one stock browser.

Interestingly my HTC one browser supports flash. I can’t remember whether it had flash out of the box or not.

The Samsung browser also supports flash if you side load it , or at least it did on my s3 and my note 2 , both of which are on android 4.1.2.

I do also have an iPhone 5 and unfortunately while I like it, as soon as my note 2 broke in a terrible accident , I immediately went out and got myself the HTC one. It took me a while to warm to it having used and loved the note 2 but now I am of the view that the HTC one is the best phone I have ever used.Never tried the s4 but I don’t think I could handle any more touchwiz (in terms of how it looks ! ) but it is incredibly functional and customizable. I still also prefer amoled screens over LCD so it was a close call and I almost went with the s4 due to its removable battery and micro sd expansion and the amoled screen ofcourse.

If you are insistent in going Droid, go with the Nexus, and stay as far away as you can from Samsung, their S3, was a miserable disappointment. I have had blackberry, Windows, Apple and droid platfrom phones, and to this day, the S3 was the worst. I took it back after 2 months. It should not take 3 seconds for your contact list to populate, that is just one of the blatant observations I have taken note of on the samsung s3.

The main issue I had with the s3 was it’s complete lack of ram for serious multitasking . The best phone I have ever owned is the note 2 and I think the HTC one equals it . The note 2 was super powerful and could seriously multitask and I am struggling to live without the stylus . The HTC one is just the best phone other than the 2 areas the note 2 excels at that I mentioned. I will pass on the s4 but will probably buy the note 3 on launch. I am expecting big things.

I have an HTC Vivid because the HTC One doesn’t have the ability to change batteries, which I think is crazy. As far as the S4, I read that, after the S4, Samsung is going to change its cell phones very dramatically. I think I’ll hang onto my HTC until I see if this comes to pass, and if it’s a good thing.

I have the HTC ONE, and it doesn’t matter that you can’t change the battery. The battery life is pretty exceptional. Power save mode helps save a lot of battery power. Only problem is, on powersave mode, the display is pretty dim in bright light…. It is only a quick swipe to change the mode…. Best phone I have ever owned.

I just recently evaluated the S4 and the One for a carrier switch (I left AT&T). They are both very nice phones, but I ended up choosing the One for its’ feel and lower price. I’ve only had it since last Friday, but it is already performing much better than my previous iPhone 4.

I was at Google I/O last week where Google announced that there will be a Google version of the S4 which will have an unlocked bootloader and vanilla Android. Only for TMobile and ATT LTE bands. Somewhere around $650 if I recall. High price but on TMobile at least, you have to pay that much for phones now anyway.

Bloatware and the desire to not pay extremely high prices outright for a vanilla phone are the two things keeping me from moving to an Android phone on the next upgrade cycle. I typically go with a previous generation phone for cost reasons, which means I usually pay $99 for my iPhone with the contract extension subsidy. For that I get a great phone without the clutter of bloatware.

I was ready to switch to an Android phone, but since the carriers insist on cluttering the phone with all manner of bloatware, I’ll pass once again. I’m genuinely curious why they insist on continuing to do this, since the practice appears to be universally reviled (both for phones and computers).

That said, the Nexus 4’s price is almost low enough for me to go with it. I’ll look again to see what Google is offering when my time comes up.

You can look at what HTC did with the One (compared with the One from last year) or what Apple did with the iPhone 3G to the iPhone 4. With some imagination, you can do interesting things with smartphone design.

Micro SD and having multiple fresh batteries ready to pop into my phone along with all of the other great features makes the Galaxy S4 a winner over the quality feel of the HTC One. My 4S is in a very nice, rubberized durable case so who cares that it does not have a pretty aluminum back.
Oh yea did I mention the 13mp camera is awesome too…..

BTW; I am not a samsung fanboy I did a LOT of research between the ONE, Note 2 and S4.

I can upgrade my phone starting on June 1 and I’ve been struggling with which phone to get, the Galaxy S4 or the HTC One. Ultimately, I’d like a combination of the two, but since that isn’t realistic I have to make a choice.

My brother got the One as soon as it was released and it is a beautiful phone. From a looks and quality standpoint, it knocks it out of the park. It is also extremely fast and responsive. I’ve done a lot of research on the camera and I’m not as worried about it as I was. An update has taken care of a lot of the issues with it, plus it has the Zoe feature that I find very cool. It’s also super fast. You can take photos just as fast as you can press the button, with zero lag. But the lack of expandable memory and a removable battery are worrisome, especially since it doesn’t look like the 64GB version will be available here. I’ve had to replace the battery on my current phone (Galaxy S2) and it was easy and cheap. That won’t be the case with the One.

The S4 looks to have all of the advantages, but I’m just not sure all of its power and prowess gets utilized by Samsung to the best of its ability. I still need to see the phone in action, but with all of the new features enabled, the phone becomes sluggish. That’s not what I want from a brand new phone, especially one as powerful as this one seems to be. I’m also worried about camera responsiveness, most notably when compared to the One. Expandable memory and a removable battery are nice, but what’s the point if I can’t get at least 32GB of internal memory? With only 9GB available on the 16GB version, I’m extremely weary of running out of room. I’m not that worried about build quality (haven’t had any issues with my S2), but the One is definitely much nicer.

I think my final test will have to be testing out each phone in the store when it is time to upgrade. I need to see the S4 in action to gauge it in reference to the One. I don’t see another phone out there to choose from, so it’s down to these two. OK, I’ve heard the Note 2 is fantastic, but it gets omitted due to its size. I have small hands, so the S4 is as large as I want to go with a phone.

They key here is, as Dwight noted, incremental improvement. I hope the people that were dogging Apple for not making some sort of groundbreaking jump between iPhone 4S and 5 are realizing that it wasn’t just puffery to say that we are reaching a saturation point in what these devices can really do. I’m sure there will be blockbuster additions in the future, but it’s unreasonable to expect these companies to be coming up with some sort of revolutionary overhaul every single product cycle. The name of the game now is better: better camera, better system specs, better interfaces, better screens, better builds, etc.

The basic design of a smart phone is… umm, pretty basic. Thin, flat, no sharp corners. One side glass, back, some sufficiently sturdy material. On/off on an intuitive place, volume opposite side, with the headphone jack on the top (if they have any sense.) Watching Samsung and Apple duke it out in court over intuitive and common sense ways of using a smartphone is wasteful and silly. (Touchscreen swipes and pull downs, watch Star Trek Next Gen sometime and tell me Apple thought of it first.)

Apple’s phones, well, if one chooses to go “bare” no external protector case, while the aluminum looks nice in the showroom, it ages quickly. It seems like a poor design that the phone practically requires a protective shell.

Smartphones are rapidly becoming a commodity product. Like desktop PCs, there will come a time when the memory and speed hit a limit that most people needn’t move beyond.

The S4 is nice, the HTC has a few tricks, too, Apple is falling behind… and soon we will just buy them off the shelf like TVs at WallyWorld… opps, we can already!

even though the HTC One has some nice specs any phone without a removable battery and SD slot is a total deal breaker for me. i’m not due for another upgrade until a year from now, so who knows what will be out there then. a nicer faster Samsung Galaxy Note X would probably fit the bill.

Apple controls the entire user experience. This includes hardware, operating system, ecosystem, and they also curate apps that are allowed into the App store.

Samsung and HTC are basically hardware manufacturers. They get the operating system from Google for free, and then they add a layer on top to try and differentiate from competitors. They have zero control over the ecosystem.

I think Apple is far ahead when it comes to ecosystem, apps, and ease of use. Samsung has a limited part of the playing field to operate in, so they try their best to jazz up what they can control. They also spend an enormous percentage of sales on advertising.

Google can’t be too happy about the say Samsung has come to dominate in the Android arena. It wasn’t Google’s plan to become Samsung’s pet software developer for free. Something has to give there eventually.

Apple lost me when they started requiring over priced charger cables available only from Apple. I bought an S4 a couple weeks ago and love it. Put a case on it and who cares that the back cover is plastic.

I bought a 64 gig micro sd card from Amazon for $54 and now have a 70 or so gig phone for $254. (Don’t ask me why users don’t get the full value off of the card). How much would that kind of memory run you for an iPhone?

It’ nice to be able to buy a cable at any Walgreens for $5 instead of having to go the mall, park and hike to the Apple store, and wait for a “genius” to sell me a cable for $20.

The Galaxy S4 looks like a great phone, but their 16 gig version just doesn’t have enough internal memory left over. I plan on upgrading when T-Mobile carries either the 32 gig Galaxy S4 or the 64 gig HTC One, whichever comes first. I know HTC sells a 64 gig version of the One on their website, but that version won’t work on T-Mobile’s 4g network.

I really like my Pantech Discover. Very similar in many ways to both the Samsung and the HTC people have been discussing but only $49 w/2 yr contract. Great camera, great display, very good battery life with most of the same features. It’s worth a closer look especially if you don’t want to shell out $199 for essentially the same product.

Dwight said, “Its rear camera has 13 megapixels with a 4X optical zoom…”
Really? I haven’t seen that anywhere else in the Samsung S4 specs, though there’s been a rumor that an “S4 Zoom” with a 10x optical zoom lens is coming in the future. You sure you didn’t mean “digital zoom”? (Which is not a meaningful spec, since software can “zoom” to any magnification level you like, with the corresponding loss of detail that necessarily goes along with that.)